Monthly Archives: August 2018

Twenty environmental and civil liberties groups are fighting back against lawsuits they believe are aimed at limiting free speech and silencing critics. The “Protect the Protest” task force announced Tuesday targets what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP, which use legal action and the threat of financial risk to deter people and groups from speaking out against something they oppose. … The effort is to include billboard advertisements, training sessions for journalists and nonprofits, panel discussions and rallies outside the corporate offices of companies the groups believe use such lawsuits. …Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard on Tuesday said a US$300-million lawsuit filed against the group by the Canadian timber industry over its forest protection advocacy is another example of the type of lawsuits the task force hopes to battle.

Chrystia Freeland

WASHINGTON — A day after President Trump threatened to exclude Canada from a revised North American Free Trade Agreement, top Canadian officials raced to Washington and said they were moving “full steam ahead” to try to reach a compromise that could save the trilateral pact. …The last-ditch discussions come as Canada faces an ultimatum from the Trump administration, which has promised to ink a trade deal with Mexico in days and leave Canada from the pact. …Canada may have little choice but to sign onto the pact. In the nearly quarter century since Nafta went into effect, various industries like automakers and food suppliers have built coordinated supply chains across the continent. …Mr. Trump’s top trade advisers reiterated on Tuesday that the United States was prepared to notify Congress of its intent to complete a deal with Mexico on Friday unless Canada quickly got on board.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says conversations with the U.S. remain “constructive,” even as White House officials threaten to impose punitive tariffs on Canadian-made cars if Canada doesn’t sign on to a new North American Free Trade Agreement​ by Friday. …While the U.S. and Mexico had been expected to work through existing bilateral issues between the two countries over the summer, they also negotiated some aspects of the deal that are considered trilateral — without Canada at the table. …But, according to the source, Canada’s pressing concern is how Chapter 19 of the original NAFTA — the dispute settlement mechanism that can be used to challenge anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases, like what has been used by Canada in past on the softwood lumber file — has been renegotiated by the two countries. Chapter 19 has been a do-or-die issue for Canada as it is often relied on to fight punitive duties.

The U.S. International Trade Commission is expected to vote today on whether to uphold duties imposed on Canadian newsprint imports. The vote comes as U.S. newspapers have campaigned heavily to lift the duties that have pushed a core expense higher and forced layoffs at some papers. …It is the same argument made regarding Canada’s softwood industry, which led to the imposition of both countervailing and anti-dumping duties on most Canadian softwood exports to the United States. The U.S. says US$1.21 billion worth of uncoated groundwood paper used for newspapers, commercial printing and book publishing was imported from Canada last year.

The US and Mexico have reached a sweeping deal to overhaul the North American free-trade agreement and are pressing Canada to accept it by the end of this week or risk getting kicked out of the continental trade pact. …The wide-ranging agreement unveiled on Monday includes a “sunset clause” that would see NAFTA ended in 16 years unless all countries agree to keep it; new auto-industry rules designed to move auto-manufacturing jobs out of Mexico and into the United States; changes to intellectual-property rules and an increase to the amount of American goods Mexican consumers can buy online without paying duties. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters the renegotiated deal also removes Chapter 19, a key dispute-resolution clause that has protected Canadian softwood-lumber exports from punitive U.S. tariffs. Now, Canada must decide whether to accept a deal that it largely did not negotiate.

Paul LePage

AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Paul LePage has appointed a St. Croix River mill manager to an international commission that protects the river’s corridor on the U.S.-Canadian border. LePage, a Republican, in August appointed Scott Beal, Woodland Pulp spokesman and environmental and security manager, to the St. Croix International Waterway Commission. Maine’s governor and New Brunswick’s premier can each appoint four commissioners to the commission, which restores and manages natural habitats on the St. Croix River corridor. “Hopefully having Beal on there will give us a better understanding of what is going on at the mill and what impact, if any, it might have on the water,” said the commission’s co-chairman, David Burns, a former Republican state lawmaker. …LePage spokeswoman Julie Rabinowitz said the governor’s appointment was to make sure the commission includes “strong economic development, transportation and waterway and environmental management skillsets.”

A recent spill of two million litres of partially treated pulp-mill effluent into a tributary of the St. Croix River is raising concerns about the long-term health of the river dividing New Brunswick from the United States. One of the main lines of the Woodland Pulp mill in Baileyville, Maine, west of Calais, ruptured Aug. 10, sending wastewater into Wapsaconhagen Stream. A police officer on patrol smelled an odour and contacted the mill that day. According to Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection, mill staff responded immediately, stopping the discharge and beginning repairs. “It’s hard to say, one way or another, whether there was impact to the river,” said Brian Kavanah, a spokesperson for the department.

When the Trump administration applied tariffs on imports of newsprint earlier this month, it brushed aside opposition from the Canadian government, the U.S. newspaper industry, printing companies, and a long list of lawmakers, including Democrats and Republicans. The tariffs, though, have been cause for celebration at private-equity firm One Rock Capital Partners LLC. …the “bad actors” are Canadian paper mills that the Commerce Department says get access to wood fiber at below-market prices, giving them an advantage in making paper. U.S. lumber and paper firms have long blamed their Canadian competitors for gaining cheap access to trees cut on public land. …Some industry observers say a Trump administration, led by a president antagonistic to the media, is unlikely to be sympathetic to newspapers. …The tariffs represent a remarkable success by a relatively little-known private-equity firm at pulling the levers of power in Washington for advantage. (Full story available to WSJ subscribers only)

GENEVA — A trade dispute over glossy paper will continue with an appeal to the World Trade Organization, even though the United States announced last month that it had ended countervailing duties on Canadian producers. The WTO announced Monday that the U.S. Commerce Department had filed an appeal of a WTO panel ruling on July 5. …U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said… the WTO panel report undermined U.S. legal grounds to combat “unfairly subsidized imports that disadvantage our workers and businesses.” …The WTO panel had largely ruled in favour of Canadian producers of supercalendared paper, such as Port Hawkesbury Paper. …The main U.S. producer of the glossy paper stock, Verso Corp., also told the U.S. commerce secretary in March that it was no longer interested in continuing with the duties following a settlement with some Canadian producers.